U-T owners discuss plans for North County Times

The North County Times joins the U-T San Diego family Monday, marking the close of an $11.95 million deal that was signed Sept. 11 between MLIM Holdings and Lee Enterprises.

“We are thrilled to complete this acquisition, as it allows U-T San Diego to provide North County residents with content of the highest quality and integrity across all our current U-T San Diego platforms,” said Douglas F. Manchester, publisher of U-T San Diego.

The company, Manchester Lynch Integrated Media, plans to provide the best of U-T San Diego and North County Times coverage to readers. Changes in staffing and facilities for the new properties will be decided in the coming weeks, said John Lynch, CEO of U-T San Diego.

“We will continue to operate both papers as is for the time being,” he said.

The U-T has been conducting market research and will use that information in making decisions about future operations.

“While we understand it is a change for current North County Times readers, we asked readers about their preferences for the content of the paper and will design a product that contains the elements readers have identified as high value,” Manchester said.

The merger will push the combined U-T San Diego and North County Times circulation within the top 10 local daily newspapers in the nation based on ABC circulation averages for the six-month period ended March 31, according to the U-T. (USA Today and The Wall Street Journal are not included because they are not seven-day-a-week local newspapers.)

Here’s what Lynch had to say about the North County Times deal:

Q: What is the significance of this purchase?

A: It (brings) to fruition our commitment to San Diego. When we acquired the Union-Tribune we said a huge part of this is our commitment to this community and it allows us to cover this very large county in a great way.

North County, more than anything else, personifies the kind of (market) we are trying to reach, upwardly mobile, well-educated, family people, military. We have kind of been very open about what we stand for and what we support, we are pro-family, pro-business, pro-military. It gives us a great opportunity to expand our readers, and viewers and visitors.

This is also enabling us to take Enlace (the U-T's Spanish-language product) and probably doubling its reach and selling for the first time in North County. This is the total platform reach. One of the goals of the next year is to launch an edition of Vida Latina up in North County as well.

Q: What should North County Times readers expect?

A: The hallmarks of the North County Times are incredible prep coverage and community coverage. We did a research project over the last couple of months trying to learn what makes North County tick and what they were looking for. Its two areas: prep coverage and individual cities coverage.

We had made up our minds already to improve our prep coverage. I think our sports coverage is second to none. We will now reinforce that with a couple of prep writers from the north.